“Captain Vanton,” began Mermaid. She paused an instant, then went on: “I am grown up and it is time that you told me my story.”
She saw the hands of the mariner7, clasped behind him[184] as he paced away from her, tighten8. She knew she must say more to make him address her.
“Captain King——” she began.
The heavy tread was cut short. He was standing9 in front of her. He was speaking in a throaty voice as if his words had to carry against the force of a powerful gale10 to reach her.
“Don’t speak that man’s name,” he was saying.
“You must tell me my story,” Mermaid repeated.
He stood there irresolutely11, an abject12 figure of shame, a sea captain unready with an instant decision, an order, a command, a shouted epithet13. He hesitated; and when he would have put his helm hard over it was too late.
“My aunt and I are going to San Francisco,” the girl was saying. “In San Francisco they will remember Captain King.”
And now his hands twisted and shook, and again he turned toward her. He muttered: “I will tell you all that matters.”
But he could not begin. He cleared his throat and shook his head. His red and tormented14 eyes looked her way. She found herself looking directly into them—and then away. She could not read all they held; and she knew she did not want to.
“You find it difficult. Correct me if I go wrong.”
He made a sound that could be taken for assent15.
“I was in San Francisco as a very small child,” Mermaid[185] began. “This I know because the ship, from the wreck16 of which I was saved, sailed from there. But I know it quite as much because Guy has told me about the city and it recalls something to me. For a long time it recalled nothing distinct—only a vague sense of the familiar. I have thought and thought about it, and some time ago there came to me a definite image of something in the past. It was the figure of a man, a sea captain like yourself, coming and going to the house or wherever it was that I had my home. I don’t remember anything about it. I only remember that there was someone in it—it must have been my mother—who had a childish voice.... And she was pretty, too, in a girlish way; at least I suppose she was. I remember no faces; I remember no figures except the single figure of the seaman who came and went; I remember only the childish voice and the sense of prettiness about me. One other thing I do remember and that was seasons of fright. I think they were connected with the coming and going of that seaman. He was, no doubt, the man you have refused to let me name. Very well; it is unnecessary to name him. What I want to know is—did he live with my mother?”
The man in front of her had been standing stock still. Still with his back turned to her he answered, “Yes.”
“He was not my father?”
“No.”
[186]“Who was?”
“John Smiley.”
The girl showed no surprise, only relief. She drew a deep breath, then murmured: “Thank God for that!”
From the motionless figure facing away from her came a question: “You knew?”
“I was certain.”
“How?”
“Both my father and I have seen her.”
“Since—since——?”
“Since her death.”
The standing bulk of Captain Vanton quivered. He reached for the arm of a chair and collapsed17 in it. He kept his back to his visitor.
“She was drowned at sea?” Mermaid put the question in a shaky voice.
“Aye,” he answered, and the unexpected word had in it a ring of terror.
Suddenly Mermaid found herself sobbing18 silently in a terrible anguish19 of thankfulness and wonder and sorrow. The stifled20 sound of her weeping filled the room. Captain Vanton made no move but sat with his head fallen on his breast, the white sidewhiskers concealing21 his profile. His breast rose and fell slowly.
The girl got control of herself, and said: “I have what I need to know. The rest does not matter, except as it concerns—Guy.” Her voice trembled again and her eyes filled. “Your own story—that’s your affair.[187] But you have no right to ruin his life because of it—and that’s what you are doing!”
Something of the awful sternness of the patriarch sounded in his reply: “I will save him.”
The words stung the girl. In a moment he had become a silly and tyrannical and destructive old man with a fixed22 idea, a delusion23—the worst possible delusion, a delusion of a duty to be performed.
“You are making of him a hermit24, a recluse25, a solitary26 and distorted young man,” she said. Her voice was like the lash27 of a whip. “You have poisoned his mind, and you will permanently28 poison his peace and happiness. Everything that would shame him you have told him; without knowing what it is you have told him, I have sensed that. And this has been going on for years. You have forbidden him to associate with other boys and other young men. The sunlight of companionship you have shut away from him. Here in this desolate29 house, shrouded30 in these wintry evergreens31, in the dark, in the damp, in the company of a sick woman and an old man full of years and past evil, you have kept him and tried to form him. If he is not wholly misshapen it is through no omission32 of yours. It must stop!”
She was thinking to herself, in her rage, that of all madnesses a monomania was the most terrible to contend with. She was in no doubt as to the form of his malady33. He was obsessed34 by a notion of saving Guy[188] from the snare35 of the world’s wickedness into which he himself had fallen, into which he had seen so many men fall. He had seen the trap spring and close on himself and others. Not many had ever escaped it; those who had were mutilated for life. There had been this mutilation in his own life. He would not trust the boy to walk warily36, he would not trust himself to teach him to avoid the snare. He would keep him where he could not walk into it if he had to seal him in a living tomb to accomplish his purpose.
With many a boy the undertaking37 would have been a preposterous38 impossibility. With a sensitive youth of a poetic39 and dreamy temperament40, under absolute control from earliest childhood, the thing was feasible; more, it was being done. Mermaid recalled with a sense of pitiful compunction Guy’s strange eyes with their wild animal look, the most characteristic thing about him. But at least then, in his teens, he had held up his head, and looked about him. Now.... She had passed him on the street twice and he had not even seen her. She had spoken to him once and he had hardly been articulate in his reply; had seemed to hate and distrust her, not as Mermaid, not as a woman, but as a person of his own kind.
She came back to a consciousness of what Guy’s father, after an interval41 of silence, was saying:
“... I have told him only the truth.”
“The truth! You have not told him the truth, nor[189] shown him the truth. What you have told him is worse than a lie. For a lie is like certain substances which are poisonous only in large doses. Strychnine, for example. Tiny quantities, a nerve tonic42; larger quantities, convulsions and death. But a little truth is a deadly poison, always. And the only antidote43 is more truth and more and more! There cannot be too much of it; but you have never given him anything but the truth of two or three persons out of the millions of men and women that dwell on earth.”
She rose from her chair, picked up the black bag she had brought with her, walked around deliberately44 in front of the seated man and opening it showed him the contents—jewels. Roped pearls and lovely sapphires45, Oriental rubies46, diamonds, unnamable stones—all the blazing wealth of gems47 that Keturah Hand had kept stuffed in a pillow for many years and had lost one summer on the beach.
“See,” said Mermaid, quietly. “Here is a ransom48. Take it. Let Guy go free. Let him live the life of a man. Let him stumble and sin and suffer, pick himself up, breathe the fresh air, and feel the warmth of the sunshine. You, who choose to live here in the darkness, can be happy in the artificial light of—these.”
The man’s face became red in a ghastly setting of white whiskers. He struggled to sit up. He put out one thick hand and clutched a rope of pearls. Then, with a great effort, he unclenched his hand and drew[190] it slowly back to his side as if he were dragging a heavy weight back with it. He managed to articulate one word:
“Where?”
“They were once Keturah Hawkins’s,” she told him. At the name his shoulders twitched49. “They were coveted50 by the mate of the China Castle. He insulted their owner, and for it he was flogged. I do not know what crimes they may have been responsible for before they came into John Hawkins’s hands. But they have been responsible, since that time, for a flogging, the wreck of one life, the destruction of one soul, and now I offer them to you to save a boy’s happiness. Will you take them and be satisfied?”
“They spell ruin,” he muttered, thickly. He made no gesture. Mermaid quietly closed the black bag.
“Since you will not take them as a ransom I will return them,” she said, “and offer another ransom in their stead.” Her low utterance51 was without the note of determination and equally without assurance of success.
He heard the door close after her. Then the man called Captain Vanton did an unpremeditated thing. He went to a drawer in the desk at the end of the mahogany and teakwood cabin-parlour, drew out a bundle of manuscript, wrote carefully a signature upon it, and the date, then thrust it back. Again he drew out something, this time a pistol, and shot himself dead.
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1
mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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tighten
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| v.(使)变紧；(使)绷紧 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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irresolutely
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| adv.优柔寡断地 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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recluse
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| n.隐居者 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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30
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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evergreens
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| n.常青树，常绿植物，万年青( evergreen的名词复数 ) | |
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32
omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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42
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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43
antidote
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| n.解毒药，解毒剂 | |
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44
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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45
sapphires
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| n.蓝宝石，钢玉宝石( sapphire的名词复数 )；蔚蓝色 | |
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46
rubies
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| 红宝石( ruby的名词复数 )； 红宝石色，深红色 | |
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47
gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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48
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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49
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
coveted
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| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
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51
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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